well i'm going to washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. while the debate over targeted assassinations of americans is centered around the obama presidency in reality this is a debate that should have been going on for the past few decades so how far back do our government's assassination programs really go also all of a sudden voting rights cases are flooding the chambers of the supreme court will these cases provide a boost to the voting rights of american citizens or give billionaires even more power in our corrupt election system and later in the show is a your take my take live segment your chance to call in and ask a question or make a comment live on the air.

you know this in his state of the union address the president made this promise about working with congress to bring more transparency to his drone targeting program abroad which has already claimed the lives of american citizens. recognize that you know our democracy no one should just take my word for the we're doing things the right way so in the months ahead i will continue to engage congress to ensure not only there are targeting detention and prosecution of terrorists remains consistent with our laws and system of checks and balances but that our efforts are even more transparent to the american people and to the work. well he's not off to a good start the new york times reports today that the white house is walking back its promise to provide senators with the full legal justification memos for

targeted strikes on americans abroad like the one that killed and we are now a walk for john brennan senate nomination hearing to head up the cia earlier this month the white house released some documents about the program and promised more to come in an effort to ease concerns from democrats like senator ron wyden who oppose the program and are demanding more oversight but now the white house is saying tough luck and rather than trying to get democrats like ron wyden on board with brennan's nomination to be the new head of the cia the white house is hoping to pick off a few republicans by feeding them bengazi red meat as the new york times reports rather than agreeing to some democratic senators demands for full access to the classified legal memos on the targeted killing program obama administration officials are negotiating with the republicans to provide more information on the lethal attack last year on the american diplomatic compound in benghazi a strategy is intended to produce a bipartisan majority vote for mr brennan in the senate intelligence committee

without giving its members seven additional legal options on targeted killing sought by senators so what's happening there's another story about assassination programs abroad that isn't being told that are mainstream news media and it's the barack obama isn't the first president to embrace this policy in fact it goes back a few decades to the days before deadly predator drones roamed our skies for more on this i'm joined by mark ames senior editor at and s f w corp editor of the exile he's also author of the book going postal rage murder and rebellion from reagan's workplaces to clinton's columbine and beyond mark welcome to the program. thanks for having me on tom let's start with the prevailing narrative that president obama is i was president in his drone assassination program the targets american citizens for assassination what exactly was the cia up to in the sixty's and seventy's

assassinating foreign leaders. the reason i want to get into the history is because i could sense again that we're having another one of these. kind of feckless debates on who is bad your guy or my guy without any sort of historical context and i mean you know average or both in the whole history of citizens united you can't really have a serious talk about and then eventually change needs huge policy dangerous anti-democratic policies without knowing actually what you're talking about the history of it and you know a big part of the propaganda in this country has been to distort history or to kind of induce a nice young people even on recent history from a few years ago so i'm back to the history of assassination policy to me before before the revelations about cia assassination for peter. came out.

in. mark you're you're breaking up pretty badly here you know hopefully so i was going to is going to hold we we're going to we're going to we're going to try and get mark back on the line it looks like the the the line has broken but you know and i don't want to tell mark story for a while you know hopefully we can get him back on really quickly but the net net of this is that we've been killing people and not just. bad guys overseas who are not americans but americans as well. actually market is in this article makes this. the my favorite paragraph the problem starts with the reagan as problems so often do most part most people on the left take for granted that reagan's executive order one two three three three banned assassinations which is not just a false interpretation but really awful mangling of one of the dark turning points

in modern american history and he points out that basically we have been killing people in the name of national security including american citizens george w. bush did this for some time for a number of years and the bush administration they they killed an american citizen because he was in the proximity of a terrorist or a terrorist suspect in two thousand and two and that what reagan did when he put in this order out this this executive order out basically was to say you know targeted assassinations ok let's create a framework of law basically what the what the what the what the executive orders that was we're not going to do targeted assassinations unless. and the unless seemed like a really small little you know pin hole that you couldn't get through turns out it's more like something you could drive a truck through or at least it's been turned into that. and the fundamental issue about targeted assassinations. in my mind and frankly whether it's americans or

whether it's even not americans if it's being done in our name. the fundamental issue is what to do process the fifth amendment the six the moment the seventh the mountain the eight the men of the constitution are you believe in the fourth amendment which has to do with getting warrants to search property the fifth amendment you know your question people seizing people the sixth amendment the right to a seven eight six seven eight the right to a speedy trial to make bail to read the fifth amendment the right to confront witnesses against you and and you know prevention of. cruel and unusual punishment all of them basically have to do with due process. might happen tony is on the line with us and pap due process we were there we were target market aims about his piece american assassinations for dummies. and a brilliant piece where he points out that. during the bush administration the george w. bush administration an american was assassinated that it was reagan's memo that

basically opened the door for this and it just seems to me like this is a fundamentally unconstitutional process well it is unconstitutional tom as you just pointed out there is with his fourth amendment fourteenth amendment fifth amendment first amendment there's no consideration of all that and what you've seen what you've seen the courts do with this actually is not even the courts it's the way the court decisions have been interpreted is they've taken two decisions that don't stand for anything having to do with being able to take american lives on foreign soil and you have a justice department a department of defense that have looked at that and they've said. well it's very clear. that the two cases i've read ad nauseum to suggest that they stand for that proposition at all is is is almost impossible to to read more importantly what you've seen them saying is look we had a special act that came out it's a war's act it's how we conduct ourselves in war in

a war setting it came out after nine eleven everybody rushed to sign it without ever reading it and that act really is so illusion that it's virtually impossible to even understand i mean it's the question is when is there an imminent threat what do they mean by imminent threat who has the authority to say we can use a drone to go kill somebody on foreign soil is that the president is it a political advisor who does that there's no guidance whatsoever so what obama has done he's done the same thing that george bush did he said look there is no clear law therefore i'm going to subject i'm going to allow a bunch of folks in a room to subjectively interpret when we can do this in when we can't and the american public is dead asleep on this right now because as we've talked about this before this in their mind is taking place in a desert far away from here and until they understand that no it's really not these

drones are flying all over within within several years going to have thirty thousand of them flying around in the sky by. less than less than fifteen years is the projection and so it's not that they're going to be killer drones but they're going to be invading our private space more than we've ever dreamed. in fact chris dorner might you know the future chris dorner could be the victim of a drone but the i think that the the key pivot point of everything that that kind of rant you just went off on it which was brilliant. was the word war he said we decided we have a war whatever happened in the war powers. that are number eight in the constitution and the best of my knowledge last time we declared a war was against germany and japan yeah well when you saw what happened with that whole concept of what can a president do in a war setting is you had the womb and. the the document that came

from professor wu who said that look here's my interpretation of the strength of the decision of when an executive can make a decision that far exceeds any congressional limitations at all and that's where if you recall that's were the first time we started seeing an extension of those rights when it came to torture get mo and then since then we have never turned a bag tom we've heard a president say we've heard of president get in front of a teleprompter and tell the american public that he is aware that there has to be a balance between the between the constitutional rights that we fight so hard to preserve and the ability to be able to keep us safe we hear him parrot those words but he's done virtually nothing to give us a good definition one on getting control over this problem the problem is until the american public is affected by this until somebody across the mexican border has

a drone in we see it used in some kind of gang war we see it used to target a police official in the united states and they launch it from. in it flies to chicago it flies wherever the hell they want to send it and we lose human lives the american public is going to stay dead asleep on this issue it's amazing is as much as you talk about it it doesn't seem to move public opinion and that of the and the just as the whole constitutionality of assassinated folks will be back with more of my pap and tony stick around marc same marking also mark thank you for joining us earlier we apologize for the technical issues after the break as the supreme. prepares to hear a flurry of new voting rights cases the question is will billionaires gain even more power and control over our already corrupted political system. let me let me i want to know wouldn't let me ask you

a question. here on this network is what we're having the debate we have our knives out. this time but it's about staying there to get here in a situation where b. and i don't even talk about the name and. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture.

here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call a dollar. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares an awful lot of money. are if you know what that is my theory sells but no one he wishes to feature a sufi on wimpole the christian public to. secure the borders because the. you know the corporate media distracts us from what you and i should care about because they're profit driven industry that sells of sensationalistic garbage because that breaking news i'm happy martin and we're going to break that.

in screwed news where there's citizens united decision in two thousand and twelve two thousand and ten the supreme court delivered a death blow to american democracy allowing millionaires billionaires corporations and even foreign interests and kingdoms to spend as much money as they'd like in our elections but unsatisfied the oligarchy is working with conservatives who've never really liked democracy all that much to begin with are calling out the us supreme court to further ruin our small d democratic systems this week the high court heard a case about contribution limits that could strike down the ban on total political contributions that an individual is allowed to make for election cycle currently individuals are limited to forty six thousand two hundred dollars in total contributions to political candidates every two years the limit is seventy thousand eight hundred dollars for political action committee donations as well if the supreme court blows those limits away and the single contribution limit to any

particular candidate twenty five hundred dollars could get blown away as soon to officially turning our elections into the wild wild west for billionaires but it gets worse next week the u.s. supreme court is scheduled to hear a case challenging the voting rights act of one thousand nine hundred sixty five specifically section five which allows the department of justice to strike down any new election laws in states that have a history of racism and discrimination several voter suppression idea laws were blocked by the department of justice just last year after is determined that they would disproportionately harm minority voters so not only might. the supreme court give billionaires a further edge of our elections but they might also give southern racists the tools they need to disenfranchise minority voters the stakes are really high let's turn over to mike patton tonio now attorney and host of ring of fire radio and mark riley host of the w w r l morning show with mark riley welcome to both of you thank

you very much it's great to have you both to two good friends and people who i tremendously respect pat let me start with you in this case of contribution limits the plaintiff argues that he doesn't mind the individual contribution limits but thinks the total limit violates his first amendment rights assuming scotus agrees does that mean that the individual level it's going to probably fall so. well of course in the last the last vestige of having something that looked like legitimate legitimate arm's length political process disappears at least now there was is this this myth that we could at least don't give a directly to the don't give a directly to the candidate give it to some pac and democracy is going to work i can assure you this court is going to push this is far as they can there is no separation of power anymore between the various branches of government and when you have a congress that wants to overreach this is a court with a conservative majority that's going to allow them to do it and that's the

unfortunate thing don't expect any relief from this this this majority of of justices right now yeah pretty pretty amazing mark this is black history month as if the i guess the a lot of the other eleven months are white history month second rate seems to section five of the v.r.a. is struck down the voting rights act by the u.s. supreme court one of the consequences going to be in southern states. well let me say first of all tom that i was one of those and i have to do a proper mayor coppa here at the turn of the of the decade there were numbers of voting rights and civil rights groups that started talking about the possibility of the voting rights act going down either through court action legislative action whatever and i was a kid when the voting rights act was passed in one thousand nine hundred sixty five and i thought to myself there's no way on god's green earth the voting rights act is going to end up being wiped from the books i was wrong i was completely wrong again to get renewed what was that two thousand and six i believe but the consequences of what they're talking about now will mean

a wholesale activity on the part of certain states across the south and by the way some of the some municipalities of the northern states like pennsylvania as well they'll keep moving the goalposts in terms of the kind of barriers they'll put up to people being able to vote that are just absolutely ridiculous are first of all they're totally unsupported by for. they were genuine they stared ready now to disenfranchise eight hundred thousand people and when you ask them how many voter fraud cases do you have the answer is well not really that many if any it's ridiculous what they have going on here and i got to tell you daryn part of the problem with this and with citizens united is the fact that american voter turnout is by world standards abysmally low we had an election in venezuela recently eighty five percent of the electorate turned out when korea was reelected in ecuador eighty three percent of the electorate turned out over the last time we had seventy five percent of the american electorate turn out really is

a serious problem and these guys are just committed to making it worse pap you're an attorney and and quite familiar with a lot of how laws made it seems to me in the voting rights act so far has restrained southern states states that have a history of racist behavior and yeah we now have the you know the koch brothers and ally can and you know all these these groups that are pushing these voter suppression ideal laws that will you know we know are going to hinder minority voting in states like wisconsin and michigan and indiana and pennsylvania should the voters right at voting rights act be expanded rather than struck down well there's been plenty of people who have said that if you think about it the voters' rights act is just it's fairly limited if you really think about it's only sixteen states that it really has teeth in those sixteen states is where those states have shown a history of being racist of trying to dilute votes of trying to intimidate voters

of trying to purge voters of trying to just make it racism in those states so at some point the courts said well these sixteen states we're going to look at carefully and we're going to have the right to review what they do there's going to be a pre-condition to you changing the laws or affecting voting at all so think that that only goes on in those sixteen states. is absurd i mean we've seen this last go round every where there's a republican governor with their republican house. we're going to see this why because alec ten years ago tom told them that this is what they need to do alec in organizations just like alec think tanks just like alec were saying you know what republicans you are losing your grip on the demographics and if you don't do something things are going to change dramatically now this is a supreme court this majority of the school either roberts thomas alito supreme

court these are people who are nothing more than blow them politicians in black robes and what we do so often tom is we create this mythical idea that you know the court is somehow above all of that these are justices who are not above that kennedy is not above this so we have every time i hear when these one of these higher minded debates about well let's look at precedent let's look at star decides to decide what this court is going to do the truth is just look at the political ideology and you know what those justices will do every time mark riley you've you have your your ear to the ground pretty well in the whole political scheme here what's going on i'm curious your thoughts of what you might have heard about you know what what is going on in the states both of the south but at the other the point the path just made i mean the it's almost like it's a whole brand let me let me rephrase that i remember i was

a little kid when brown v board was decided but i remember all those signs all over the united states from fred coax john birch society you know impeach or a warrant which was about brown v board and and you know the open racism in the united states at that time it almost seems that doesn't it seems that that's making that sort of thing is making a major comeback in the republican party. are there going to be efforts to strengthen the voting rights act or if it gets struck down by the supreme court a plan b. to make sure that this kind of raises behavior is stopped on the part of the republican party as a political strategy i have to tell you if it was up to me i would apply the voting rights section five to every state in the country if they don't if they're trying to say the south this changed and you know it's no longer relevant in the south apply equally to everybody people forget there are two boroughs of new york city brooklyn in the bronx that have to pre-clear just like alabama so the bottom line here is if you don't well if you want to make the argument that the south has

changed which is nonsense i mean even the governor of virginia the other day said wait a minute we just changed the voter i.d. laws in two thousand and twelve and now you get ready to change them again in two thousand and thirteen why are they doing is why is there no evidence of the fraud that they say they're trying to protect the process it's absolutely ridiculous if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it is not a pigeon yeah. mark i had a caller into my radio show today who is just absolutely adamant a guy from from the upper peninsula of michigan that he was certain that because he didn't have to show id to vote that people were just like there must be voter fraud all over the place what what or what's actually going on out there. look first of all voter out now voter fraud is so negligible i forgot how many may have risen to the level of double digits in the two thousand and twelve election i think the their hours are specific is that more people are killed by televisions falling on

them than have been arrested for voting for voting for a year but you see what they do is create the remember that situation last year where somebody was alleging that they were bringing bus loads of illegal aliens into certain areas the undocumented workers the property but you know bringing these bus loads full of people and they were all registering to vote no these people have nothing they have absolutely nothing but what they do have is control of the state legislatures of many of the states controls of the governor's mansions in many of these states and that's what they're using because as as pat pointed out earlier they're losing the demographic battle the two thousand and twelve presidential election told them very directly you are losing that battle and you can bring out twenty five marco rubio's not going to change anything so the only way they can do this is by moving the goalposts and disenfranchising people in slightly more sophisticated ways than they did in the fifty's and sixty's and pap isn't this at the end of the day just an extension of richard nixon southern

strategy that basically he was he was dancing to the tune of the billionaires of the day they were multi-millionaires back then and the big corporations but he knew that the way to win elections was by dog whistling to the racists lee atwater planned it very well with both with the rich and richard nixon and with ronald reagan when ronald reagan showed up in philadelphia mississippi in announcing he was running for president he did that for a reason tom he did that because he was trying to reenergize racism in this country because if you divide this country into the kind of division that they were looking for they thought they had a better chance they could win on religion they could. and on race they could win on values issues lee atwater invented that interesting story before lee atwater died he was he died of a very painful brain tumor but in his last days he said he regretted the injury

that he did to to democracy and to america by dividing us like he did but the republicans don't regret it the republicans continue it and now the good news for the republicans is they have judges on the supreme court dressed up like jurists who really are no more than politicians and that's who alito is thomas scalia roberts and kennedy there's no difference between them and a republican politician yeah and on top of that they've claimed now if ever since eighty three of the right to strike down laws any mark might happen tonio mark riley thank you both gentlemen tonight thank you great to see both. coming up our phone lines are now open for your take my take it live segment so if you want to chance to ask a question live here on the big picture give us a call to go to i don't for a twenty one thirty four we'll be talking with you after the break.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so. you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you saw if you don't i'm time for visiting which. potentially. a blizzard taking aim for the northeast it's expected to hit stunning in a few hours from new york to maine we have team coverage of the storm. but what we're watching is the very heavy snow moving into boston properly or today it

was very sticky you can see it start to become much more powdery down this is the bottom line there is still a lot of snow out here a good place for snowball fight. d.c. it is going to pretty incredible day there and even record snowfall throughout much of it might still be slow to be driving license of emergency vehicles are exceptions. a little worse if you're going to. the white house or the. radio guy in a minute. because you've never seen anything like this i'm told.

welcome back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour after president obama gave his state of the union speech last week republican senators marco rubio and rand paul gave separate responses to the speech is this an indication of the growing divide within the republican party and will that rift between establishment republicans and everyone else continue to grow also it's the wealth inequality stupid forget about the sequester if we really want to rebuild our economy and strengthen the middle class we need to tackle the epidemic of income inequality in this country i'll explain more in that i'd still take. a lot of your take my take live our phone lines are now open so if you want to

share an opinion make a comment or ask a question live on the air give us a call at two zero two nine zero four twenty one thirty four so let's get to our first caller that i read a in san diego area thanks for calling. i think you tom thanks a lot for the insight i enjoy your show you just mentioned at the four chief justices this code is only scalia alito kennedy in it day to day are basically republicans at heart in kind of the good old boy. blick and five a why then yeah yeah five why did they become right roberts then become the bane of all republicans by voting for a favor of a bomb a care finding a loophole to pass obamacare i don't feel it's a good question and and thanks for raising it. there was a. little boy leads out of the court terms of leaks out of the court i guess would probably be more appropriate phrase well little leaks out of the court it we get the word that roberts was actually going to because he was the deciding vote he was

actually going to strike down obamacare right up until about three weeks before and i think. i think he had a crisis of conscience i'm guessing that he was you know looking at his legacy he was thinking of you know he's the chief justice of the united states supreme court and history is going to judge him and obamacare really isn't unconstitutional and there's certainly many many precedents for it and so my guess is at the last minute he just and certainly a lot of conservatives but on the other hand you could argue that it was actually a gift to conservatives because now the they've got something that they can campaign against karl in san bernardino california hey carl thanks for calling tonight. well of course the country wants change the old ways are not working and the right we republicans are very frustrated that because they're lining these politicians they want to win talk to their leaders and their

money left and right because the citizens won't change they want democracy. they don't want the old value so your question or comment is that it was that point to be. there just for support yeah ok karl i you know thank you for the call i die i'm not going to disagree with that or all stands well gloria in philadelphia pennsylvania gloria what's up. early on i heard them talk about targeted individuals targeted americans overseas there's thousands of those right here in the united states from june sixteenth two thousand and nine might. targeting started a neighbor told me they say you're crazy i said who said they said the chief of police go on there in delaware county and the morton blow out they said you're losing your mind and then i was going to take you for the call i don't want to get

into individual names of individual police officers or politicians. that i can't speak to i don't know those people i can't back up your assertions so i may be a local show would be more appropriate but thanks for thanks for calling thanks for for caring michael in dublin virginia hey michael welcome to the program. michael you are on the air. michael was not. ok let's let's go to charmaine in new york charmaine you're on the air. hi tom thank you so much for the job that you've been doing and as you know i'd like to help you contribute a little bit on it is with the obamacare. aspect of it is that you may not actually be aware of many of these things but there are many cures for cancer

sufferers some of the most aggressive wants there are there is how for people with diabetes where there are natural supplements after some people have had results after six weeks and they no longer require insulin now as far as the obamacare goes because the multi million dollar industry that they're hoping that this information really truly can not reach the people and the amount of money that would be truly saved for medical cost would be traumatic we decreased and i would really hope that it some point in time in the future you could do look into this and perhaps do you know included in one of your shows because you know i like charmaine i completely agree with you and thank you for the call i mean not necessarily specifically about any particular cure for any

particular disease but but you are right i mean we've had we've done two conversations with great minds segments with people who are talking about one specifically with the physician author who is talking about curing diabetes with diet and another one with dr mike mitchell gainer who was talking and that was dr bernard the one that i just mentioned then dr mitchell gainer we did a half hour conversation a great line about preventing and treating cancer using natural remedies and he was talking about things like you know coke at the coconut juice and i mean you know it's serious where there's serious epidemiological work i am of the opinion that obamacare should cover things. like chiropractic care massage therapy which i think is a therapeutic modality that is as preventive as it is restaurateurs for people with muscular skeletal problems and. nature opposite nature pets people dr nature pathic physicians go through a medical school that is that is nearly as rigorous and link the as

a regular physician and i think that they should get the respect and frankly the payment i've seen a lot of good benefits come on the trip in gary and montreal canada hey gary thanks for calling what's up tom i've read most of your books except for the ones on deficit disorder my question is a really simple one i just want to know why you did not run for politics but you would be brilliant because i mean you would might or bernie sanders immensely who i also but why not well gary thank you for your kind words what i admire about bernie is that he has the not just the courage but the skills to get out there. just the idea of every day being out in public and having to. engage in in the really hard work i mean really hard work that every politician has to do is something that is not part of my skill set it's not wired into me i

appreciate your kind words but but i do want to make this point you know i say get out there get active and for many of us getting active means blogging or writing or talking to other people or being in the media whatever and i'm basically an introverted knows how to pretend he's an extrovert i can do this with a camera microphone but you know i'm very uncomfortable in a room of twenty people and and so it's not it's not my that's not my path but i think each one of us has to find our individual path you know what is the way that we can have an impact on the political process in america even if it's just talking with your neighbors talking with people where you work so thanks for you. words paul in washington d.c. hey paul thanks for watching what's up. tom how are you. i am curious as to why there are not you talk about the low voter turnout and this huge. disparity in wells.

we are seeing why are there not more people running on these specific platforms running for office why are there not people talking about more radical ideas like actually putting a baseline on poverty and. also putting perhaps a cap on inherited wealth putting a limited at which people and disseminating that wealth back throughout the society i think you know ideas like this that are a little bit more radical and yes the beach will stir up quite a bit of controversy but i think these are the type of things that are going to get the ninety nine percent and especially the bottom section of the people that are really just franchised to be interested in actually participating in the electoral process all i agree with you completely. you would probably really enjoy reading

huey long as every man a king speech you could easily track down on the internet he long as long long dead populism is what you're talking about it's a political strategy basically or a system as it were of talking about what the people need and the idea that government is here to serve the people who elected and politicians are here to serve the people who elect them and frankly i think we're hearing a lot more populist talk in the united states first of all the entire progressive caucus is populist you get some senators who are populists sherrod brown and bernie sanders are probably the most well known genuine populists in the united states senate you have almost one hundred of them in the united states house of representatives good people like jan schakowsky and it's just a whole long list and i and frankly i think that the teapot already was. you know it was an astro turf movement it was paid for by billionaires it was put together back by the tobacco industry twenty years ago as a as a as

a movement to be. anti tobacco tax and those anti-tax and you know boston tea party like anything but i think that the average person who identifies themselves in the tea party or who showed up for these tea party events they believed that they were part of a populist movement and in fact to some extent it became certainly on the ground where the volunteers are showing up a populist movement it's just that they thought that the way to get more wealth for the middle class was to cut taxes for billionaires i think the reason why the tea party's not around anymore well i should pretty much don't see much activity is that after a year or so of reciting that you cut taxes for billionaires it'll help all the rest of us you know the people figured out that it's not going to work. so michael in dublin virginia a michael got a minute. do a quick one ok governor yes mark romney gets to see you in the big picture are we watching. is about controlling to resort to material goods but dividing your racial

lines and all current a lot of political learn. there by your own little battle but this is all about taking over our land in our resource you know everything notions of distraction and it got out by being occupied that i totally agree with you and this is what i love about you know good populists like bernie sanders and sherrod brown as they always take it back to economics it's all about the money you know the old the old woodward and bernstein famous you know follow the money line it's so true in politics as well and so michael excellent point thanks a lot for calling make it that's it for your take my take alive thanks for all your calls if we didn't get to your calls tonight give us a call next week. after the break as the devastating budget cuts of the sequester continue to loom large what's more important for the future of america making sure the wealthy elite don't have to pay taxes or ensuring the strength and stability of our economy and of the middle class i'll tell you in tonight's deal we take.

let me let me i want to know we're going to let me ask you a question. here on this network is what we're having a debate we have our knives out. to do this right to spend staying there to get here in this great way of being i don't want you to talk about the surveillance of me. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for life you think you understand it and then you glimpse

something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture. talking about the same story doesn't make it news. no pocky says tough questions make it. worse for those things. white house chief of a. radio guy minestrone office. quote should be good you've never seen anything like this i'm cold.

in the most of the rest of the news according to a new poll by the independent polling company n s o n opinion strategy of two hundred fifty thousand americans sampled eighty seven percent associated the word republican with greed racism and violence when it comes to politics these aren't the best things to be known for but why do americans have such negative views of the republican party maybe it has something to do with the fact that within the republican party is a gulf between establishment republicans and the new kids on the block who are typically bringing their extremist conservative views to capitol hill after all the g.o.p. was a united party why would two republican senators have to give separate responses to president obama's state of the union speech so is the republican party in

a state of civil war or tea party members of congress waging a battle with establishment republicans for the future of the party joining me now for more on this is austin peterson director production of freedom works and editor the libertarian republican welcome back thank you for having. us your thoughts on this split within the republican party right well this started you know you talk about the tea party earlier back in two thousand and seven when this really began and you were talking about it being some sort of astroturf movement if you really really really happened way back when what really happened in two thousand and seven was that the university the boston tea party a bunch of rabble revolutionary young people got together and they were a six million dollars for dr ron paul's presidential campaign because they believed in something because they believed in free markets and limited government and they believe in individual responsibility personal responsibility i believed in that which is why i donated my time and money that campaign and i worked with partners to do things like sit around and poll people like senator rand paul is that a marco rubio got us in the power because we knew that there was going to be no way

. for us to stop the obamacare agenda if we didn't put ourselves in the real strong conservatives in the house if you look at the house republicans if you look at who is really a true fiscal conservatives you can probably count on both hands the amount of real true conservative libertarian but there is more we used to have one just wrong paul now we have about twelve we're putting together a real coalition that could put a an actual libertarian republican in the white house i believe that rand paul is right that the country is ready for a libertarian republican narrative so you're using the word conservative a libertarian or a virtually interchangeable fashion almost who william f. buckley famously said that a conservative is a man who stands with astride the arc of history with the sea and i show you stop. burke talked about how the essence of conservatism and that word was used back then george washington call himself a liberal edmund burke called himself a conservative but the essence of conservatism was slow incremental change over time generational change whereas the essence of liberalism was the willingness to

embrace new ideas novel things in a way that you may not know the consequences right and it sounds to me like what you're describing libertarians want to do is a radical departure from the historic way that the united states has been run is at least economically right and therefore it's really liberal that conservative well libertarianism by technical definition would be classical liberalism people who consider themselves conservatives today really believe in a liberal economic philosophy what you call a liberal today is more what did you could be a social democratic a social democrat would be something what you would think of as more of a democrat or a socialist someone on the left classical the philosophy of classical liberalism is rooted in conservatism the problem with conservatism today is that it's been hijacked by the leftists who came into the party in the one nine hundred sixty s. and declared themselves neo conservatives and so we have what we have right now is a coalition of traditionalist conservatives social conservatives radical libertarians such as myself and of neo conservatives who came in. one thousand nine

hundred seventy because they were unable to get longer what are you asked that they wanted to get done they were not able to make their gains in the democratic party so they thought if they switched to the republican party call themselves neo conservatives the public would buy yeah i got it so what are you guys going to do about it all we're doing is getting together a coalition right now it's the continual it's the continuation of ron paul's revolution that began in two thousand and seven this is revolution three point zero me and my fellow revolutionaries are putting together a campaign that we think is going to put a real libertarian republican in the white house in two thousand and sixteen i'm more excited than i ever have been because i knew that if mitt romney were to lose that election then it would galvanize the republican base create a civil war such as the one that we have now is jim de mint i mean jim de mint now arguably has more power than he did when he was in the senate as the head of the heritage foundation and the heritage foundation has traditionally kind of split from the koch brothers the libertarian branch the freedom works you're part of. the cato institute used to be the charles koch foundation right has split from the libertarians in the they've historically backed kind of old line barry goldwater

type conservatives is this is are we seeing a battle of think tanks here as well as a politician yes absolutely so you might be missing it if you're not really paying close attention because there has been a battle for the heart and soul of these institutions going on here on the republican party not necessarily because a lot of these institutions are in the you know much the lawsuit of the cato institute that is a good example of what's happened of course we lost our speaker dick armey there was a bit of what they called a coup and we did lose it all right and we now have the head of our establishment is a real what you call it ron paul libertarian type. took over freedom works and here we are today we now have institutions like the heritage institute who are hiring libertarians every day we've got libertarians on staff all over the place we've got a little sooner infiltrating the city that's right that's what you've got to do is just like the democrats did with the republican party in the sixty's and seventy's they would call themselves neo conservatives libertarians will be whatever we want to say to the republicans on the big are republicans who say that what you guys are doing is you're. turning the republican party into the democratic party under

george mcgovern george mcgovern basically embrace the hippies the peaceniks well there was a lot of great things that came out of george mcgovern he was a very strong civil libertarian so i don't totally reject the legacy of george mcgovern i'm not i will i'm not paid last election right but i don't really don't care i care more about principles parties or tools i don't care anything about parties before country i put my country before any party so what's really important i think is that we get our economy back on track by cutting our deficit we need to cut spending and we need to cut taxation because the only way that we're going to grow and help the poor people that we care about and restore civil liberties remember rand paul is the only senate tea partier that has stood up for civil liberties against the thing the drones that you talk about he's the only one that said that not no marco rubio did i got it i got a none of i got all of the goals thanks thanks a lot of us if they criticize it all it will be that.

the looming sequester isn't just about republicans trying to crash our economy and it isn't just about trying to lay off unionized public sector government workers to live in sequester is also about one of the most destructive and significant problems facing our nation today wealth inequality thomas hunger heard of the nonpartisan congressional research service has released a new study on wealth and income inequality in america he looked at a recent fifteen year period in the country and found that by far the largest contributor to increasing income inequality regardless of income inequality measurements was changes in income from capital gains and dividends as harvard puts it the reason income inequality has been increasing has been the rising income going to the top one percent most of that has come in capital gains and divot. it's

america's millionaires and billionaires make most of their income from investments like stocks bonds and real estate holdings as such these investments are taxed differently from ordinary income the kind of stuff the you earn paychecks in fact they're taxed at a much lower rate than ordinary income right now in america the average teacher a public sector employer pays an average tax rate of twenty five to thirty five percent and a surgeon or a family with two college educated incomes can pay up to thirty nine percent but then there are those nations wealthy elite the mitt romneys of the world who currently pay a maximum capital gains tax rate federal income tax rate of only twenty percent it's kept in often much less than that because the capital gains and carried interest taxes are both progressive in other words they go up as your income goes up so they start very low and they're subject to being reduced by thousands of loopholes and deductions america's richest four hundred billionaires right now more

wealth than the bottom one hundred fifty million americans thank you thanks in large part to this incredibly low capital gains tax rate that they pay or arguably don't pay in fact the capital gains tax rate has not been this low since the late one nine hundred twenty s. and we all know what happened that the great depression that's because when wealth accumulates in the hands of a few as a did in the one nine hundred twenty s. and as it is right now the entire nation suffers and ultimately spirals into a recession which sometimes flips into a depression. so history and the experience of other nations around the world tells us that nations with low levels of income inequality do better than nations that just have a few super rich and a lot of working poor in other words a large and broad a strong middle class keeps nations healthy and stable and given that rather than

letting the rich get richer and running the risk of crashing the economy again should we be doing something in fact everything we can to decrease the levels of income inequality shouldn't we ask all americans and not just the middle class to pay the same income tax rate that's currently pegged at the peak of thirty nine percent. even ronald reagan knew that a low capital gains tax rate combined with other tax loopholes that lead billionaires pay less than bus drivers was bad for america here's what he had to say about it in one nine hundred eighty five speech at northside high school in atlanta. we're going to close the other part of detention the loan some of the family will do wouldn't pay their fair share. in the series of those who would rather stand but it was granted they sometimes made it impossible for millionaires to make money on a bus driver was being presented itself and mentioned greece are you going to the million euro to pay more attention to the bus driver or the way. the largely

republican crowd shouted in response that yes the millionaire should pay more than the bus driver but that was the this is now today's republicans don't agree with the gipper they see nothing wrong with mitt romney secretary paying almost twice as much in federal income taxes and massively more in payroll taxes then limits self that's why in the debate over the sequester john boehner and company are defending tax loopholes like the capital gains tax rate and pay and pay for romney's loophole with deep spending cuts that will hurt poor and middle class americans and further the epidemic of income inequality in our nation in fact republicans are more enthusiastic about coming into our military than they are to take one extra penny from the billionaires who own them on the other hand president obama democrats understand just how devastating deep spending cuts will be to the economy and to americans and they're in favor of closing the tax loopholes to let the wealthy elite make huge profits at the expense of everyone else bottom line is that the

millionaires and billionaires should be taxed the same as the rest of us it would help us avert the sequester it would prevent further damage to our economy and most importantly eliminating the capital gains tax loophole is not for to need to do something about wealth inequality as researchers richard wilkinson and kate pickett at the equality trust u.k. have demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt wealth inequality underlies virtually all of our social problems drug addiction and mental illness to mass school shootings it's time to close the tax loopholes and make america's be. millionaire class pay their fair share of taxes like the rest of us do. and that's the way it is that i thursday february ninth twenty thirteen and don't forget democracy begins when you get out there get active take your.

own plane to the. to the finish as world class athletes ascend on sochi brand new olympic venues are kept safe by high tech sensors behind the scenes congestion battling infrastructure digs deep and builds hard to get thousands where they need to be it's building bluebook fueled by clean energy while research is pretty new life into gold medal dreams the race is on going to be a day year on. the central. potentially deadly blizzard taking aim for the northeast it's expected to hit stunning in a few hours from new york to maine we have team coverage of the storm. but what we're watching is the very heavy snow moving into boston proper earlier

today it was very sticky you can see it start to become much more powdery he said the bottom line there is still a lot of snow out here a good place for snowball fight. jason it is going to be pretty incredible today there and even record snowfall throughout what's been like nobody's allowed to be driving lessons from emergency vehicles are exceptions. wealthy british style. tight. market. can. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's concert for a no holds barred look at the global fund.